A faint looking Harmony turned now from the window, with wildly gusting hair and feathers. 'I cannot abandon my friends, Napoleon!'
The warden briefly gagged. 'You…consider this deceiving lot to be your friends? I have seen inside their hearts Harmony, and none of them are worthy of your company, let alone your friendship! If you love me then you will trust my instincts and accept my decision. You do love me, don't you?'
Lowering her eyes to the tiles, the angel hesitated before mumbling — 'I love you.'
Uncertain, exactly, to who she was addressing, Napoleon was the one who looked pleased.
'I will succeed Harmony!' exclaimed Eddinray, trying not to cry. 'I will so!'
I examined his gaunt, moustached face, concealing my doubt behind optimistic eyes.
'The duel will be held as soon as possible!' Napoleon interrupted. 'Tomorrow you become prisoners, tonight you are guests — and as guests your needs will be suitably seen to.'
'My wife?' asked Kat, instantly.
'You can have time with the old woman.' he consented. 'She can even witness the joust by your side. Mr Fox?!'
My forehead shot up to my name.
'Step into the elevator.' he said. 'It's already on route.'
At the very end of Napoleon's sentence, I heard that distant machinery rocketing toward the penthouse.
'Go and meet prisoner 2020.' he concluded. 'You will have much to talk about…”
38. A Soul Worth Saving
Doors sealed me in with that fusing weld down the centre, my stomach then attempted to escape from my mouth when the elevator dropped like a cinder block down the shaft. I ducked for cover as gas-exploded overhead, then was thrown sideways to smash my cheek off the wall.
This chaos did nothing to remove me from the coming moment. Somehow, I always expected this meeting with prisoner 2020 to take care of itself; that it would all work out with little or no effort from me. Bludgeon, Newton, Missy, Kat, none of them prepared me for the actual encounter. Did I even expect it to arrive?
Palms wet and an uncomfortable constriction in my throat, I waited on the vibrating floor for this elevator to take me where I needed to go. I wasn't waiting long. Brakes screeched outside and I was shocked by the sturdiness of the halt, and the immediacy of the opening doors. Already here, I could hardly believe it. Steam wafted out of the elevator and into this new room. I took my time standing, and was frightened by a horse voice coming from inside the cell. '2020!' it announced.
Growing fog obscured all edges, leaving the dark centre of the cell to hover like a vague dream. With caution I entered, widening my eyes and covering my nostrils from the old air. The voice belonged to the hooded guard beside the door, the lean thing at ease with ridiculous piles of unmoved dust balancing neatly on its head and shoulders. Its calculating mask looked me over, before its nod gave me consent to proceed.
My delicate footsteps disturbed the smoky floor, hands throttling the weapons at my belt — sword in my left, dagger in my right — prepared for absolutely anything. A substantial silhouette became clearer in this gloom. It was a standing slate, a rugged monolith from murky ceiling to misty floor; and there, strapped to it by ropes like a conveniently wrapped up gift, was a naked man — prisoner 2020.
It was a man. Of course it was. Saliva dribbled from his bottom lip, but everything above his nose was still concealed by darkness. Moving closer, his condition was dirty and dishevelled, nothing a few hot meals and a shower couldn't take care of. I dabbed at a feverish sweat on my forehead as I crept closer; and blowing the collected clouds away, I examined his slouched face, now lifting to meet mine.
Something happened. A passage of time was stolen from me — a minute, maybe more. I woke on the stone floor, overcome with a scatterbrained faintness and the worst kind of sickness. 'This is a mistake.' I mumbled, the brain like mush in my skull.
It must be a mistake — an illusion of the mind — a trick of imagination — some perverted joke on me. How could this person be here in the 9th Fortress? How could I, of all men, have been sent to rescue him? Not him! Not possible!
Again, I cleared the grime from my face and inspected his features once more — going carefully over the cheekbones, meticulously over his long nose and thoroughly over that unremarkable mouth and bald-head until there could be no mistake. No doubt. This was a man I knew, despised, and died with.
'Daniel Fox,' he said. 'Have you come to kill me?'
***
Napoleon Bonaparte and my helpless friends observed through that burning fireplace.
'Who is he?' asked Harmony, puzzled. 'Whom have we travelled so long for?'
Napoleon approached her back, and she shuddered the instant he took her shoulders.
'That person,' he whispered in her ear, 'is named John Curtis. Not a famous man of his time; no great leader or mastermind criminal, but an ordinary individual capable of extraordinary acts, a selfish banker who caused the death of two teachers and four children — one being your friend's daughter.'
'Poor Daniel.' mumbled Harmony. 'What happened, Napoleon?'
'Under the influence of alcohol that man drove a school bus off the road. Manslaughter is common in Mr Fox's time, in any time; and for taking the lives of six, Curtis served a miserly four years in prison for his crime.' Napoleon went to warm his palms against the fiery scene. 'The bureaucracy of old Earth prevents justice,' he added, 'and as you can well imagine, Mr Fox brought down his own. Bitter until the end of his days, he could not forget, and he would never forgive. He pointed a gun at his enemy's head, but in the end could not bring himself to kill. So together the men fought and together –
'They fell.' Kat finished, transfixed. 'They fell…'
Nodding back, Napoleon concluded — 'Sent to rescue the soul he put here. I will say this for your God, Harmony, he does have a wonderful sense of humor. Yes, the scientist Newton may want John Curtis, but make no mistake about it, he rightly deserves his place in my Fortress. You see, Curtis is the worst kind of man — despicable. There was no remorse felt for his crime, no care for his victims or sorrow for their grieving families — I assure you there still isn't. His act was a trifle to him, nothing more, a burden postponing his life not devastating it to pieces. Physical pain cannot reach such vacuous individuals, so here they experience something far greater — the systematic destruction of their mind. And once sanity is shattered, there is no hiding place from pain.'
'I don't feel comfortable watching this.' said Harmony, turning away. 'It's not…right.'
An amused Napoleon watched her walk to the window. A stern faced Kat meanwhile, crept closer to the fire.
***
Embraced in mist, Curtis and I stared into the mirrored bewildered of each other. When the confusion had passed, I felt the first groan of a monster, the kind I'd seen rampant in Bludgeon and Kat — the beast inside us all. Curtis was not suffering clearly, or loudly enough for me; there was no wired noose around his throat, no blade painstakingly peeling the flesh from his chest, no nails hammered daily into his toes or cherubs to break his skull in with rocks. How could his be suitable punishment after all the shit we had seen? The wall of tears and oncoming flood, souls in vats of fire, the impaled on spikes, the drowning under sea, the devoured mutineers and petrified statues of ice! Yet here, this bastard was held by rope to a rock? This wasn't enough. Not nearly enough.
I pulled the dagger from its pouch, tugged back his slippery head and pressed the blade to his swallowing Adam's apple. 'Hurt me Fox!' he giggled, smiling his leathered wrinkles at me. 'I don't feel a thing!'
I pressed the dagger into his neck, the apple bobbling up and down with his chuckle.
'Make the cuts slow!' he begged me. 'Oh, hurt me good!'
'Enough!'
I moved to slice open his throat, to spill his innards over my boots, when suddenly, his expression poured cold water over my fire, and somehow tamed my monster. It was a very subtle and serene closing of his eyes that did it, as if he wanted me to kill him, expected it, and even desired it. I lowered the dagger from his neck and took a step back, feeling my boiling blood come to a simmer.
John Curtis squinted an eye open, surprise imprinting his face as he watched my blade return to my
